dishwasher safe

and UV resistant

bird of prey

posted by: giuli at 19:42 | link | comments (5) |
photos

a tree

posted by: giuli at 10:42 | link | comments (7) |
photos

a young version of me

This is a favorite photo of mine as a kid. I was only three here. My mother took me to school, as she did every day. It must have been my first day, in fact. She had decided to dress me up in school uniform so that I'd blend in okay with her grade-one pupils. I was given my own desk at the backmost row. I guess I drew a lot of attention at first that my mother would often tell her pupils not to mind me. But then the novelty of me eventually wore off. So I'd listen sometimes, or play most of the time, at the back, and nobody would mind me unless I got a wee bit too noisy, which I didn't, really. I loved that red lunchbox. It's all that mattered to me. Let’s not talk about the hair. Let it suffice to say it’s thick and brown and fine as corn’s hair and fell over my forehead. And parted on the left side. I used to think that that white on the wall behind me was half a pair of wings, like an angel’s. And I’m proud of that look on my face. It’s prophetic of my future aversion towards being photographed solo. Ironic, considering… Now my mother's classroom, I remember it so well. The whole building was situated at the farthest point from the administrative building that it was unofficially named “Tawi-Tawi,” in reference to the southernmost point of the country, farthest from the capital. Its dilapidated metal door was chained and padlocked, smelled of rust, and indeed the chain itself was rusty it could’ve stained your hands if you touched it; the brown-red powder would’ve rubbed off on your skin if you too haphazardly handled the chain. But if you were my mother and did this every day, twice - in the morning and in the afternoon – chances are you’d have polished the rust off of certain links of the chain through regular contact, so you would've learned to touch only these polished parts. With me standing there, hearing the clanking, waiting as my mother turned the key inside the padlock and disentangled the chain, having that momentary faraway look, with everything else at the back of my mind, a weird smell would come to the fore. Sharp and pungent, like stinky old cheese, if not softened somewhat by the cool morning breeze. This became an everyday thing; I would come to associate this smell with schoolday mornings and my mother’s classroom, and the whole of “Tawi-Tawi” for that matter. But only much later would I bother to ask what this spectacular smell was of. Crickets, I was told. Or cricket dung; I forget. Since then, every time I look at this photo, I could almost smell the crickets.

posted by: giuli at 19:47 | link | comments (11) |